The only way to turn the tide against the Assadist forces is by both equipping the FSA with heavier weaponry, and providing the FSA with greater support in the form of eventual intervention by aerial and some ground forces.
People took to the streets of Tripoli and Benghazi on Wednesday night holding banners with messages such as ‘Chris Stevens was a friend to all Libyans’ and ‘Sorry people of America. This is not the behaviour of Islam or our prophet’.
After being home to several Olympic competitions this summer, London's ExCel Centre is to host one of the world's most important arms fairs in 2013. But the event's past affiliations with autocratic regimes and the nature of the exhibitors and buyers involved should be enough to forbid it from hap
The Palestinian Islamist movement is uncertain about its strategy in the wake of the Arab spring. This creates an opportunity for much-needed progress in the region, says Nathan Thrall.
On 1 September, Lakhdar Brahimi took over from Kofi Annan as UN-Arab League envoy to Syria. His task is not an enviable one, even for such a capable operator. But the new envoy has a few options for ending the Syrian civil war through diplomatic action.
Could the neglected strength of the mainstream Muslim community – a vestige of the Ottoman self-governing ethno-religious millet system – hold Syria together as it did nearly 100 years ago and prevent its dismemberment into a number of mini-states?
To Orwa Nyrabia and thousands of Syrians who are detained along with our hearts in the cells of the tyrant.
The brutal response of Syria's authorities to an eruption of protest in early 2011 propelled the country into conflict. It was the latest and most catastrophic of a series of misjudgments by Bashar al-Assad's regime over the decade of his rule, says Carsten Wieland.
The civil war in Syria and unrest in Lebanon may have deeper roots than meets the eye. In fact, they may very well be the tragic result of centuries of colonisation and secularisation, as recently emphasised by Walid Jumblatt.
It is no easy thing to let your best friend go. But Iran needs to change its attitude towards the Syrian regime if it wants to stay a relevant player in the Middle East.
Whatever genuine grievances and demands for political reform the Syrian people might have had a year and half ago were trodden underfoot by this stampeding sectarian drive that the Syrian opposition itself worked so hard to foster among its own supporters.
